The United Nations says it has raised more than $1.7bn (£1.3bn) in pledges to fund urgent humanitarian aid efforts in the central Sahel region of Africa that it said was being pushed to “breaking point”.
At a virtual conference the UN Aid Chief, Mark Lowcock, described the Sahel as a preventable human tragedy where 13 million people were at risk and seven million were in a state of acute hunger.
Some 22 countries scaled-up aid to the sub-Saharan belt spanning Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
The UN’s Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, said security in the Sahel had sharply deteriorated, violence was on the rise and internal displacement had increased twenty-fold in less than two years.
The donations fell short of the $2.4bn the UN was asking for overall for aid efforts until 2021.
